American History

History of USA

Native Amercians

Civilizations began in the Americas long before Europeans thought they did. The Olmecs and the Mayas were two of the first. Other peoples lived in North and Central America.

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical system

-          Pueblos  - like Red Indians and having houses with doors at the top floor

-          Anasazi  - The basket maker

Christopher Columbus – Italian Sailor

European Exloration

The Native Americans first welcomed the European explorers. The natives introduced the Europeans to corn, potatoes and other vegetables. They also introduced them to tobacco.

The Europeans introduced the Native Americans to guns and horses. The Europeans also exposed the natives to new diseases like the measles and smallpox, which killed many of the Native Americans

British Colonies

In the early 1580s, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted Sir Walter Raleigh permission to establish colonies in North America. The land was named Virginia, after Queen Elizabeth who was called the Virgin Queen since she never married. The first two attempts failed. The third attempt, in 1587, succeeded with Virginia Dare being the first British colonist born in American. Governor John White returned to England for supplies. When he returned, in 1591, the colony was gone. All that was left was a post with the name "Croatan." Croatan Indian legend says the settlers became part of the tribe. The British refer to the settlers and "The Lost Colony."

In 1606, King James I set up the Virginia Company of London. They were to find gold in Virginia, then return to England. They never found gold.

England continued to send settlers to America. The colony grew. In 1619, the Virginia colonist were given the right to self government. In 1620, a group called the Pilgrims left Plymouth, England on the Mayflower. They were headed for Virginia. They were blown off course and landed in Massachusetts, at a site they called Plymouth.

The Mayflower, which transported Pilgrims to the New World. During the first winter at Plymouth, about half of the Pilgrims died.

The thirteen Colonies

The British eventually established thirteen colonies in America. Many were settlers who started from the Massachusetts and Virginia colonies. They formed the original thirteen British colonies:

• Massachusetts
• New Hampshire
• Rhode Island
• New York
• Connecticut
• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• Delaware
• Maryland
• Virginia
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Georgia

The French and Indian War

The French Indian War was one of a series of wars between the British and French starting as early as the 1600s. The French Indian War took place from 1754 to 1763.

In the 1750s, France and Britain were fighting in Europe. The war was now spreading to North America. British Colonists wanted to take over French land in North America. The British wanted to take over the fur trade in the French held territory

British soldiers fought against French soldiers and Native Americans. Native Americans joined in the battle against the British because they were afraid the British would take over their land.

The war ended in 1759 when British Major General James Wolfe captured Quebec

Result of the War

In the peace treaty of 1763 the British got most of the French land in North America. Also as a result of the war, the British began taxing the colonists to pay for the war.

Missions of California (1769-1834)

The Franciscans came to California to convert native tribes to Christianity and prepare them for life in a Spanish society. The natives were taught religion and the Spanish language. They were also taught skills such as brick making and construction, how to raise cattle and horses, and weaving.

The natives would live in the missions until their education was complete. They would then establish homes outside of the missions. Once the native in one region were educated and converted to Christianity, the missionaries would move on to new locations. The old missions would be left as parish churches. In the new location, the missionaries would begin the conversion process once again with a new group of natives.
The missions prospered. By 1804, the occupation of the sea-coast line from San Francisco to San Diego was complete. There were nineteen missions within a day's journey of each other. Construction started on a second row of missions more inland. The missions created a considerable wealth and economy with agriculture and large numbers of livestock.
While many people benefited from the missions, many more wanted that prosperity for themselves. Traders, settlers and explorers saw the wealth and began to exploit the missions. There was constant pressure for the mission economy to be taken over by the Californians. In 1813, regulations from Mexico and California were issued to disbanded the missions. They were to be turned over to civilian authorities. This process of "secularization" became the end of the missions

The American Revolution

The American Revolution, also known as the Revolutionary War, was one of the most significant events in American history. Without it, the United States of America may not have come into existence

Join, or Die: This 1756 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urged the colonies to join together during the French and Indian War.

Boston Tea Party

When the British repealed the Townsend Act they removed all taxes and duties on goods, except for tea. This became the focal point of the colonists anger

The British East India Company had controlled all tea trading between India and the British colonies. As a result of the tea tax, the colonies refused to buy the British tea. Instead, they smuggled tea in from Holland. This left the British East India Company with warehouses full of unsold tea, and the company was in danger of going out of business.

The British government was determined to prevent the British East India Company from going out of business. It was going to force the colonists to buy their tea. In May 1773, Prime Minister North and the British parliament passed the Tea Act. The Tea Act allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonists, bypassing the colonial wholesale merchants. This allowed the company to sell their tea cheaper than the colonial merchants who were selling smuggled tea from Holland.

This act revived the colonial issue of taxation without representation. The colonies once again demanded that the British government remove the tax on tea. In addition, the dockworkers began refusing to unload the tea from ships.

The Governor of Massachusetts demanded that the tea be unloaded. He also demanded that the people pay the taxes and duty on tea

On the evening of December 16, 1773, a group of men calling themselves the "Sons of Liberty" went to the Boston Harbor. The men were dressed as Mohawk Indians. They boarded three British ships, the Beaver, the Eleanor and the Dartmouth, and dumped forty-five tons of tea into the Boston Harbor

The Thirteen Colonies began a rebellion against British rule in 1775 and proclaimed their independence in 1776 as the United States of America. The United States defeated Britain with help from France especially, and also the United Provinces and indirectly from Spain in the American Revolutionary War.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, still meeting in Philadelphia, declared the independence of "the United States of America" in the Declaration of Independence. July 4 is celebrated as the nation's birthday. The new nation was founded on Enlightenment ideals of liberalism in what Thomas Jefferson called the unalienable rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"

The California Gold Rush (1848 to 1859)

Rumors of gold in California had existed for years before the Gold Rush. But it wasn't until gold was discovered at Sutter's mill that the Gold Rush began

John Sutter was a Swiss emigrant who arrived in California in 1839. He became a Mexican citizen and received a land grant of 50,000 acres in Sacramento Valley.

He built Sutter's Fort at the site of present day Sacramento. At Sutter's Fort he developed farming and other businesses. Sutter's Fort became a rest station for travelers and immigrants to California. Above right is a picture of Sutter's Fort at the time of the Gold Rush.

In 1847 John Sutter hired James Marshall to build a sawmill at a site named Coloma. At the right, below, is a picture of the Mill at Coloma.

Sutter's Mill
(Source: Library of Congress)

On January 4, 1848, James Marshall picked up a piece of metal at the mill that looked like gold. He took the metal to Sutter. They tested it and confirmed that it was gold.

Sutter was afraid that the discovery of gold would take his workers away from the fields. He was also concerned that gold would bring prospectors onto his land. He asked Marshall and the others working at the mill to keep the gold a secret.

But word got out! By late 1848, word had spread across the country. On December 5, 1848, President James Polk speaking to Congress confirmed accounts of gold. The discovery of gold in California became national news.

American Civil War

The Civil War split the nation. It was the most bitter conflict within the United States. The source of the conflict between the North and the South resulted from fundamentally different ways of life. Economy in the South was heavily based on agriculture and growing cotton. The North was heavily industrialized with factories and manufacturing being central to the economy.
Growing and harvesting cotton required large numbers of workers. This work force was made up of about 4 million slaves. By the 1800's, the African slave trade had become illegal. But existing slaves were not freed. Men and women of the North pushed to completely abolish slavery. The South feared that losing the slaves would have a severe economic impact on cotton plantations.
Abraham Lincoln was against slavery. When he was elected President in 1860, seven Southern states left, or seceded, from the United States. They formed the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861, southern Confederate forces captured Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Four more states seceded, and the Civil War began.

Abraham Lincoln.

Battle of Gettysburg

The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the best-known speeches in United States history
Beginning with the now-iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago," referring to the American Revolution of 1776, Lincoln examined the founding principles of the United States in the context of the Civil War, and used the ceremony at Gettysburg as an opportunity not only to consecrate the grounds of a cemetery, but also to exhort the listeners to ensure the survival of America's representative democracy, that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The Civil War consisted of more than 50 major battles and 5000 minor battles. In less than 5 years, more than 600,000 men were killed and hundreds of thousands of others were wounded. The Union army with more soldier and resources eventually overcame the Confederate army. On April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered his Confederate troops. The war was over. Five days after the surrender treaty was signed, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Southern sympathizer

Slavery

Slaves were commonly used in the Southern United States for servants and for working fields, such as picking cotton. This photograph is of seven African American slaves sitting in a pile of cotton in front of a gin house on the Smith Plantation, 1861-1862)

Slaves were often treated harshly. Many slaves tried to escape from their owners. Many succeeded in escaping. Others were caught and punished.

World War I (WWI) or First World War (called at the time the Great War) was a major war centered on Europe that began in the summer of 1914. The fighting ended in November 1918. This conflict involved all of the world's great powers,^[4] assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers.^[

President Woodrow Wilson declared U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917 following a yearlong neutrality policy; the U.S. had previously shown interest in world peace by participating in the Hague Conferences. American participation in the war proved essential to the Allied victory. Wilson also implemented a set of propositions titled the Fourteen Points to ensure peace, but they were denied at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Women's suffrage in the United States

                                          ^{the right to vote in political elections}

The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, the conference that refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from America because of their sex. Stanton, the young bride of an antislavery agent, and Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran of reform, talked then of calling a convention to address the condition of women. Eight years later, it came about as a spontaneous even

The suffragist movement in the United States was an outgrowth of the general women’s rights movement that officially began with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Several leading figures in the antislavery movement had also begun to question the political and economic subjugation of women in a society that claimed to be a democracy. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C, Wright, and Mary Ann McClintock issued a call for a convention concerning the rights of women. That convention met in Seneca Falls, New York on 19-20 July 1848.

The convention adopted a “Declaration of Principles,” deliberately modeled on the Declaration of Independence

The most influential leaders of the women’s rights movement in the second half of the nineteenth century were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But the united struggle for women’s voting rights broke into two factions following the Civil War. Led by Anthony and Stanton, those who believed that they should seek an amendment to the U.S. Constitution formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in May of 1869. Later that same year, the American Woman Suffrage Association was formed by those who believed the most effective strategy would be to pressure state legislatures to amend state constitutions. The leaders of this group were Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.

Around 1912 the feminist movement, which had grown sluggish, began to reawaken. Protests became increasingly common as suffragette Alice Paul led parades through the capital and major cities. Paul split from the large National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which favored a more moderate approach and supported the Democratic Party and Woodrow Wilson, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, and formed the more militant National Woman's Party. Suffragists were arrested during their "Silent Sentinels" pickets at the White House, the first time such a tactic was used, and were taken as political prisoners. In prison they were tortured and force-fed while on hunger strikes led by Alice Paul.
Finally, the suffragettes were ordered released from prison, and Wilson addressed the Congress on women's suffrage, urging them to pass a Constitutional amendment enfranchising women, which they did with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. It became constitutional law on August 26, 1920, after ratification by the 36th required state. NAWSA became the League of Women Voters and the National Woman's Party began lobbying for full equality and the Equal Rights Amendment which would pass Congress during the second wave of the women's movement in 1972. Following ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, a U.S. Court ruled the arrests of the over two hundred suffragists as unconstitutional, and the amendment was upheld by the Supreme Court after a legal challenge

The Civil Rights Movement

Prominent figures of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Clockwise from top left: W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Meanwhile, the American people completed a great migration from farms into the cities and experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. At the same time, institutionalized racism across the United States, but especially in the South, was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights movement. The activism of African American leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched the movement. For years African Americans would struggle with violence against them, but would achieve great steps towards equality with Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between Whites and Blacks.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to achieve equality of the races, was assassinated in 1968. Following his death other leaders led the movement, most notably King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who was also active, like her husband, in the Opposition to the Vietnam War, and in the Women's Liberation Movement. Over the first nine months of 1967, 128 American cities suffered 164 riots.^[77] The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the strengthening of Black Power, however the decade would ultimately bring about positive strides toward integration

 

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system
Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back.^[2][3] On some occasions bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard.^[4] National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Before Parks was arrested in 1955, she had a small episode on a bus in 1943. Parks was ordered to enter at the back of the bus. As she was heading to the back of the bus, the bus driver drove off without her. On that day, Parks promised herself that she would never again ride a bus driven by James F. Blake, the offending driver. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the front-most row for black people. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver, James F. Blake, told everyone in her row to move back to create a new row for the whites. At that moment, Parks suddenly realized in horror that she was on James Blake's bus. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.
When found guilty on December 5,^[5] Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4^[6], but she appealed. The boycott was triggered by her arrest. As a result, Rosa Parks is considered one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement.